1. Field of the Invention
This invention generally relates to notification systems, and more specifically relates to a method, product, and apparatus for notifying subscribers of alerts, warnings, and emergencies.
2. Description of the Related Art
Commercial electrical power available today is becoming unreliable due to the growing number of electrical loads placed on the electrical power grid. Electric power supply has not kept pace with demand. Electric generation facility construction is heavily regulated and new sources of electric power have not been built to meet current demands. Many existing electric generation facilities are producing electricity below their maximum capacity because they are old, hence require more maintenance downtime than newer facilities. With the decrease in electrical generation and without a corresponding decrease in electrical demand, the Western U.S., especially California, is experiencing electrical supply shortages.
The California Independent System Operator (ISO) is charged with managing the flow of electricity along the long-distance, high-voltage power lines that make up the bulk of California's transmission system. The not-for-profit public-benefit corporation assumed the responsibility in March, 1998, when California opened its energy markets to competition and the state's investor-owned utilities turned their private transmission power lines over to the California ISO to manage. The mission of the California ISO is to safeguard the reliable delivery of electricity, facilitate markets and ensure equal access to a 12,500 circuit mile “electron highway.”
Operating a power grid, one of the most complex and dynamic technological systems requires extraordinary amounts of data and the ability to respond to rapidly changing circumstances. Supply and demand conditions will at times require grid operators to interrupt services to customers in order to maintain the integrity of the power system. Failure to balance the amount of power generated and the amount consumed creates system instability that could culminate in the collapse of the electric power system in the entire western United States. Grid operators anticipate conditions, such as insufficient operating reserves, that could lead to a collapse of the grid and avert them by implementing contingencies, such as load shedding and controlled outages known as rotating outages or rolling blackouts. Operating Reserve is the margin of generating resource above that is required to meet consumer demand. This margin is necessary to maintain reliability and as protection against the sudden loss of a generation resource. An Operating Reserve deficiency is oftentimes foreseeable in the day-ahead or hour-ahead markets and, if not corrected, may require intervention in the real-time operation.
Emergency Notices specifically relating to deficiencies in Regulation or Operating Reserve are issued by the ISO based on the level of severity:
Stage 1: Actual or anticipated Operating Reserves are less than Minimum Operating Reserve Criteria;
Stage 2: Actual or anticipated Operating Reserves are less than or equal to five percent (5%);
Stage 3: Actual or anticipated Operating Reserves are less than or equal to one and one half percent (1.5%).
Immediately after the ISO declares an emergency, an extensive network of communications is activated. The ISO initiates and pursues communications with state and federal agencies, market participants, the media, and industry organizations charged with western-wide reliability monitoring. These communications are accomplished by a wide variety of means: e-mail, telephone, radio, pagers, and web postings. Once the Shift manager of ISO real-time grid operations declares an Electrical Emergency (Emergency Stage One, Two or Three), the Shift Manager notifies the Executive In Charge (EIC). The EIC notifies the Public Information Coordinator (PIC) and the Emergency Response Coordinator (ERC). This activates the ISO Emergency Response Team. The Shift Manager, the EIC, the PIC, and the ERC then must engage other channels.
With the ISO Emergency Response Team activated, the Shift Manager directs the Grid Resource Coordinator to post the Emergency Notice on the System Status page of the California ISO Website. This automatically triggers an email to be sent to Market Participants and key ISO personnel, and also triggers the posting of an ISO Emergency Notice on the Emergency Digital Information System (EDIS) Website that is hosted by the Governor's Office of Emergency Services. Subscribers can receive email, pages, faxes and/or pocket radio communications that indicate when new notices have been posted. In addition, other web sites such as “www.incident.com”, “www.outofpower.com”, and “www.infotility.com” also provide notification services by forwarding ISO updates to their subscribers.
When a Stage 2 Emergency Notice is declared, interruptible service is made available to the ISO by the Utility Distribution Companies (UDCs). This Interruptible Service program was developed through arrangements with subscribing end-use customers to shed load under special UDC tariffs within the jurisdiction of California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC). Under a Stage 2 Emergency, direct notification is limited to interruptible customers who are directed via remote terminal units (RTUs) or phone to curtail their interruptible loads. These programs provide incentives for summer on-peak capacity [kW] savings in addition to the incentive for energy [kWh] savings. Program participants are required to curtail electric consumption during peak times, and thereby conserving energy resources. It is imperative that program participants curtail their share of electricity immediately upon a Stage 2 Emergency declaration. Failure to promptly curtail their share of the electric load results in stiff penalties and risks placing the entire power grid in a Stage 3 Emergency.
Upon notification of a Stage 3 Emergency by the ISO, having determined the aggregate amount of load that must be curtailed in the control area as a whole, the Shift Manager on duty orders the participating utilities (e.g., Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), Southern California Edison (SCE), and San Diego Gas & Electric, etc.) to reduce load in their service territories. Once the ISO orders a specified amount of load shedding from a utility's service territory, the utility determines which geographical regions or blocks will be interrupted. The utilities may delegate a percentage of that load reduction amount to municipalities (e.g., Vernon, Pasadena, etc.) within their service territory with whom they had pre-existing contracts with for sharing in load reductions.
Utility companies then notify customers by sending e-mail non-residential customers (interruptible customers and those who request updates of system conditions), making manual or automated telephone calls to residential customers on life support (critical care) and customers with demands greater than 300 kW, posting location of interruptions on website (affected blocks), providing press releases and live interviews notifying customers of emergency and identifying location of interruptions, and establishing pre-recorded messages for customers calling the customer's service centers.
When an ISO directs a load shed, utilities have to respond quickly to identify blocks of commercial and residential customers whose consumption matches the target power figure and switch off their power. PG&E's more than 13 million electricity customers have been divided into 15 blocks, based on the load of each circuit. Each block, accounting for about 500 megawatts of usage, covers about 200,000 customers in neighborhoods scattered throughout PG&E's Northern and Central California service area. Each PG&E customer is assigned to one of 2,900 circuits. Approximately 1,000 circuits contain essential customers and are exempt from rotating outages. Under the CPUC's rules, only those circuits that serve specifically designated classes of customers who provide essential public health, safety, and security services (such as large hospitals and fire and police stations) are exempted from these outages. The remaining 1,900 circuits are divided across the 14 blocks. Customers are being notified to review their PG&E bill on a regular basis to determine which outage block they have been assigned.
SCE has identified the circuits available for use in rotating outages according to CPUC rules. A circuit is an overhead or underground electrical line that supplies power to a combination of residential and/or commercial customers. These circuits have been arranged into groups. Each group includes a number of circuits that comprise approximately 100 megawatts of electricity usage per group, with each circuit generally serving between 800 and 2,000 customers. The amount of power ISO designates for curtailment will determine the number of groups that are interrupted at any one time (e.g., if ISO calls for 500 megawatts, SCE would interrupt service to about five groups). The groups will be interrupted, as operating conditions permit, and each outage is expected to last about one hour. At the end of the hour, service will be restored to the affected groups and the next groups on the list will be interrupted to maintain the amount of load requested by the ISO. Once a group has been used in a rotating outage, it is moved to the bottom of the list.
The active notification of end-use customers of Stage 2 and 3 Emergencies is critical to protecting their health and safety. Sudden loss of electrical power has dramatic consequences that compromise public safety, property damage, loss production, and economic losses. Immediate notification of an impending change event or condition is instrumental in reducing loss of life, reducing personal injury, or reducing economic losses. Certain utility customers need advanced notification in order to respond to the imminent power outage where they would light generators and switch to generator power, halt vital manufacturing processes, properly shut down equipment via standard operating procedures, escort customers or employees away from hazardous areas, or cordon secure areas.
Advanced notice of an impending power outage has many advantages. Law enforcement personnel can be dispatched to intersections to aid in directing traffic, or increase patrols where regular security measures are compromised by the power outage. Electric transportation systems can curb service before an imminent power outage to prevent passengers from being stranded above ground, or in a tunnel. High-rise office buildings, retailers, and residential buildings can halt elevator service to prevent passengers from becoming stranded. Electric utility customers who have standby generators are afford the opportunity to light off auxiliary generators, run them until they reach proper operating parameters, and then shift the load from utility power to auxiliary power.
Manufacturers, petroleum refineries, chemical companies, or pharmaceutical companies can halt their vital processes ahead of the scheduled power outage. Building maintenance personnel are able to properly de-energize ventilation systems, or shift to auxiliary lighting and ensure that other sensitive equipment is powered-down to prevent surge damage. This will prevent surge damage to expensive equipment or prevent product damage. Office personnel are afforded adequate time to back-up their data or complete critical actions or reschedule critical events. Web and application servers shift responsibilities to non-affected servers so that affected servers may be safely shut down.
General California electrical emergency warnings are broadcast via television, radio, Web sites, or Email. To receive an electrical emergency notice broadcast requires that a receiver be turned on, and at least one person's attention focused on the receiver. Most TV and radio receivers do not have Uninterrupted Power Supplies (UPS), which render them inoperable during power failure, and therefore would not provide critical communications. Further, electrical emergency warnings broadcast in this manner are general in nature and typically provide unnecessarily widespread geographic area warnings. The warnings communicate the system status of the power grid, general location of predicted rotating outages, and not the specific circuits that will be affected by the load shed. In addition, sources of notification such as the CAISO System Status Web site may be vulnerable to excessive Internet traffic, server downtime, denial of service attacks, and the like.
Further disadvantages of current notification schemes may include the delay or notification failure attributable to dialing, pager, FAX and cellular telephone numbers, even if automated, to offline Internet or cellular systems, to Internet or cellular system traffic, to non-automated notification processes, to gaps within business notification systems such as one key recipient attempts to notify an entire business, and notification failure due to Internet packet loss.
In order to circumvent many of the existing problems and provide California power customers with adequate advanced notification, Governor Gray Davis issued an Executive Order on Thursday, May 24, 2001 requiring ISO to provide sixty minutes advanced notice (instead of thirty minutes) of a load shedding event. The Executive Order provides non-affected customers with ample time to curtail non-essential equipment in order to avert a load shedding, and provide affected utility customers with more time to shut-down equipment before electric curtailment. Consequently, the electric load over the entire grid is reduced and a directed load shedding may be averted because of the additional time of advanced notice.
As of May 24, 2001 ISO communicated 62 thirty minute load-shed notices since the beginning of the year, 38 instances of which electric curtailment did not occur. Since load shedding was not experienced 61% of the time after a load shed communication, utility customers may take future load shed communications less seriously, and subsequently delay or refrain from taking action since shutting down a business unnecessarily affects their bottom line. Also during 2001, advanced customer warning was provided once. In short, electric loads are dynamic, and load-shed directives may be delayed, cancelled, accelerated, or a load shedding may occur with little or no advanced warning.
There is no known single system for providing circuit specific rotating outage notification to utility customer critical personnel or providing such circuit specific notification in combination with existing Stage 1, Stage 2, Stage 3, notice updates, or notice cancellations of electric emergencies provided by a combination of many vendors and/or many systems.
Power company alerts, warnings, and emergencies are instituted to benefit utility customers and the public, but current communications do not provide optimal benefits because timely information is not communicated to key personnel efficiently. Accordingly, in light of the above, there is a strong need in the art for a system and method of more reliably, effectively, and accurately delivering load shed notification services to customers and subscribers.